Computer systems may be operated by entities that are independent from one another. Independent entities are those in which one entity does not control the other and vice versa.
In certain applications, the computer system of one entity may require information from an account at the computer system of a different entity. This may occur if a user has accounts on multiple computer systems and one computer system will consolidate data from other computer systems that provide the data, or one computer system has a more desirable user interface and feature set than the computer system holding the data, and so it is desirable for the user to view the data on the computer with the more desirable user interface or feature set. It would therefore be desirable to allow the information from the user's account on at least one first computer system to be requested and received by the user's account at a second computer system.
Conventional computer systems accomplish this transfer of information among independently operated computer systems by the user providing the log in information for the computer system that will provide the data to the computer system that will be retrieving it. The retrieving computer system logs in to the providing computer system and supplies the user's user identifier and password it received from the user and obtains the data from the providing computer system.
However, this arrangement is suboptimal and a better way of retrieving data could be desirable.